


shielding

by virago (avalanchelily)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crack, Ewoks, Leia's Metal Bikini of Doom, M/M, Telepathy, The Force, The Hamster Dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6848911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avalanchelily/pseuds/virago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren snoops in people's heads. Hux comes up with the perfect strategy to keep him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shielding

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously procrastinating from studying for finals means de-anoning from kinkmeme fills written three months ago. Original fill [here](https://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/1841.html?thread=1677617#cmt1677617), for the prompt: 
> 
> Hux knows Ren likes to snoop in people's heads, so he trains himself to think of the most outlandish things when Ren is trying to mess around with his mind. 
> 
> Things like Ewok version of the hamster dance, soap opera scenes starring Wookies, insane things to get Ren to back off. Sometimes he'll imagine ridiculous versions of what he actually wants, like lying naked in a he'd surrounded by rose petals, telling Ren to "come here, big boy."

Hux, in his blessedly literal shower (ah, the privileges of rank), groaning as the water pounds into his coiled back muscles and rinses his headache away: he leans his forearms against the stall and contemplates, dreamily, the suds swirling down the drain. Now, to go straight to bed for his first adequate night’s sleep in three weeks, or to carve just long enough out of his precious allotted time to jerk off for the first time in considerably longer? His cock makes his decision for him, plumps a little at the merest thought of relief, and Hux has just managed to brush himself with his fingertips when—

 _Why, General, such_ depraved _self-indulgence_ , says Kylo Ren, his voice echoing from somewhere in the back of Hux’s skull and summoning his headache back with a vengeance. _When you still have the personnel briefs for next month’s transfer to read, and no landing plan yet for our invasion of Corrigan-4._

 _Don’t you have anything better to do with your life?_ snaps Hux, cock wilting precipitously and his to-do list scrawling itself behind his eyeballs. Ren is conspicuously silent, but rebelliously tossing and turning in bed until 0400 doesn’t make Hux feel any better when he drags himself, subhuman, to beta shift briefing. Only the barest modicum of dignity prevents him from planting his fist in Ren’s smirking face.

*

The glorious conquest of Nebudach: natives screaming and fleeing pell-mell, duracrete tenements blown sky-high, tromping AT-ATs carving livid lava-edged furrows through the streets, all projected in HD and surround sound to the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , where Hux basks in his own reflected glory.

“Delusions of grandeur, much, General?” says Ren, growl flattened by his helmet’s modulator, as he stomps into the room. “How proud you must be, that you can only defeat these backwater mud-licking imbeciles with six full complements of Stormtroopers on the ground and a _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyer.”

His bridge crew snickers, unwisely, but swallows their laughter before Hux can identify the culprits. Phasma glowers at him judgmentally despite her impassive silver mask.

“So sorry we can’t spend all day failing at a scavenger hunt for a useless old Jedi,” says Hux, barely quashing the urge to about to follow up with, “and look who’s talking!” Fortunately Ren, with an admittedly impressive swirl of his robes, has already departed as swiftly as he arrived.

Hux snarls.

*

Sparring with Phasma in Training Room 6: a futile endeavor at the best of times, and made worse by the fact that she cornered him on his way to his own PT and the gym is full of curious subordinates, now bystanders. She has height, weight, and ten years’ frontline experience on him; he barely weathers her flurry of just-pulled punches and is attempting to formulate a counterattack when Ren observes, _She’s not an entirely unattractive woman, is she?_

“Wha—?” says Hux, eyes forcibly drawn where no man’s eyes ever dared go, and is struggling to reconcile the inherent trauma of “Phasma” and “attractive” when his world flips over and his nose forcibly encounters the sweat-permeated ground.

 _Oops_ , says Ren.

 _I hate you_ , thinks Hux, and vows revenge.

*

According to Darth Vader’s official biography, required reading from his Academy days, Force-users use “shielding” to protect their minds. Hux, with great skepticism, pictures an impermeable lavender-sheened bubble. Around his head.

 _What in the Galaxy_ , says Kylo Ren, _do you think you’re doing?_

 _Shielding_ , Hux supplies involuntarily.

Later, the Knights of Ren’s quietly submitted report lands on his desk, detailing concerns about their leader, who recently suffered a violent and spontaneous attack of _something_ in an otherwise-unremarkable hallway. Hux will take what he can get.

*

Next, feeling peculiarly like a character in an Old Republic-era children’s tale, Hux thinks about duracrete. He even clears a space in his (unfortunately regulation, and thus approximately comlink-sized) quarters and takes off his boots and socks, for authentic meditative purposes.

 _No_ , says Kylo Ren. _Just, no._

 _So it’s working!_ Hux thinks back triumphantly.

 _You like having me on your ship_ , says Ren suddenly.

Hux’s eyes fly open. “No—what—how patently absurd—,” says Hux to his empty room, but Ren has already departed his mind in glee.

*

So clearly drastic measures are necessary. On the obscure mining world of Drus-17, a decrepit creature of indeterminate gender and species informs him that it has exactly what he needs and, more intriguingly, that it can cloud his mind from the outer world. This seems remarkably prescient of it, and he hands over a frankly astonishing number of creds for a satchel of powdery smelly stuff, to be, apparently, dissolved into his hot beverage of choice and imbibed.

Several hours later all is well in Hux’s world, despite the psychedelic portal swirling in the ceiling above his bunk and a curious heaving in the motion of his state-of-the-art ship. “Hey, hey Kylo,” says Hux, his own voice echoing from a very great distance, “is it working?” He waits an eternity for Kylo’s familiar mental voice to filter back.

 _Is what working?_ says Kylo, sounding distracted, followed rapidly by, _Oh, you’re joking._

“I’m smarter than you,” Hux informs Kylo.

 _No you’re not_ , says Kylo.

Hux would continue the argument, but he’s distracted by the scarlet sparks exploding out of the portal. They look warm, and tasty.

 _I win_ , says Kylo.

“Do not,” says Hux. “Win what?”

 _How did you even,_ Kylo says, but before Hux can puzzle that one out, Kylo orders, _Go to sleep._

Hux sleeps.

*

He wakes up fully dressed but tucked under the covers, with no boots, indeterminate memories, and the germ of an idea. Shielding is all very well, but isn’t the best defense a good offense? As Ren departs in his shuttle to the surface of yet another forsaken Outer Rim planet, where he will undoubtedly terrorize the natives and utterly fail to bring back any actionable intelligence, Hux begins to lay his devious, devious plans.

*

At his desk, 0200, coat swung over his shoulders and chair-back together to brush against ground: calls in progress with his navigator on one datapad, half a panel of logistics engineers on the other, and a bristling spreadsheet of spreadsheets front and center on his desk.

 _Aren’t you industrious_ , says Ren, smug and sinuous, accompanied by the mental equivalent of a kid repeatedly poking an anthill with a stick.

Hux, with great cheer, brings to mind one of the many lurid images gleaned from several hours’ dedicated research appropriated by force from his demanding schedule.

 _Have you gone insane?_ Ren demands. _Are those ewoks? What are they doing? Is that a mating dance? Why are they twitching like that?_

Hux hums to himself, throwing a little shimmy into the lull between jump and spin. His underlings pause uncertainly.

 _Fix your brain_ , Ren says, and flees.

Hux refocuses on his spreadsheets. Ah, sweet victory.

*

In the hangar bay, prior to the incursion of Yarna-2: Hux bellows at the top of his lungs, hardly requiring the voice amplifier, alight and aloft from the righteous fervor coursing through his veins as the assembled Stormtroopers pause in their preparations to listen with all due respect.

 _No one gives a fuck, Hux_ , Kylo Ren informs him, twirling his lightsaber hazardously where he waits impatiently outside his own shuttle.

 _Your mother in a metal bikini_ , Hux retorts triumphantly.

A blissful, frozen silence rings within his head.

Ren’s lightsaber goes pinwheeling across the room, narrowly skirting a row of TIE fighters in a crackling whirl, and plunges hilt-deep between two panels twenty feet up the hangar wall. The Stormtroopers cower.

That one, Hux can concede, was at least partly his own damn fault. Still, might as well take advantage of a still-speechless Kylo Ren. “How utterly careless,” Hux sniffs. “Soldiers, take this as an example of how _not_ to conduct yourself on the battlefield.”

*

A rare moment of relaxation in the officer’s commissary, marred only by Ren’s venomous glare, which slices across the room and leaves Hux’s off-duty staff huddled into cautious clumps: evidently, Hux has yet to be forgiven for what he has privately termed the Bikini Incident of Sheer Genius. Nevertheless, he is determined to savor his fine Corellian brandy and the cool, quiet company of Phasma in a rare sympathetic mood.

Unfortunately, Ren seems to come to a decision—one that, judging from his incoming stalk, has bypassed mental torment in favor of more immediate satisfaction. Hux, in a spate of tipsy problem-solving, broadcasts a visceral image of himself, naked and blushing from collarbones to toenails, atop a luscious bed of lightsaber-red rose petals. His hair waves gently in an invisible breeze. His legs part, just slightly.

 _Come here, big boy_ , he purrs.

Kylo Ren freezes mid-stride. “Wait a moment,” he says.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Hux, focusing desperately on rose petals.

 _Huh_ , says Kylo.

There is an excruciating pause.

 _Oh_ , says Hux.

Hux makes his excuses with great alacrity, discretion be damned, though he can feel the tips of his ears turning red beneath Phasma’s knowing stare.

*

A classic Kylo Ren temper tantrum: shattered screens, viciously slashed control panels, buzzing lightsaber and hapless ensigns heaped unceremoniously in the corridor outside.

“Will you cease and desist,” says Hux from the doorway, only to be, of course, ignored. Some misshapen bit of his ship goes flying past his head

Well, he can say he’s tried the reasonable method, thinks Hux. Now for the effective one: Hux summons up a particularly fabulous memory of kneeling over Kylo in his oversized bed, lasciviously running his tongue along Kylo’s jaw, collarbone, navel, jutting hip, the soft fragrant crease between groin and thigh…

 _I take your point_ , says Kylo, swiveling to a stop.

 _You usually do_ , says Hux.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! feedback welcome, here or on [tumblr](http://avalanchelily.tumblr.com) (though how much there is to say about utter crack I don't know...)


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